what then shall be said of him who by neglect hazards the salvation of his soul? You are now on trial for eternity: Christ has died that you might live-salvation is offered in his name-indifference is unbelief. In an hour you think not you may be called to your account; by mere neglect you may lose heaven; eternal death is the fruit of a careless life, and this you may incur before to-morrow. What infatuation, thus to expose immortal interests when nothing is to be gained! O ye careless, awake from sleep; you have too much at stake thus to slumber. If you would but pause, you could not fail to see the inconsistency of being so eager after the vanities of this world, while you are negligent of the realities of the world to come; of being so intent upon the acquisition of wealth that may take to itself wings and fly away, while you are indifferent about the true riches; of grasping after momentary honour, while you let go immortal glory.

4. Another cause of alarm is, the danger of your present condition. Neglect of the gospel insures destruction. "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation!" Many think, if they escape those out-breaking sins which bring ruin upon men in this world, they are in no danger of the fearful gulf; but this is a fatal mistake. Careless sinner, if you had never uttered a falsehood, injured a neighbour, or stained your hands with a single trespass against society, you would still be in the gall of bitterness: your apathy is a crime for which no morality can atone. You have never thought enough of God to love him, or of Christ to follow him. Were you to die in your present state, your alienation of heart, your indifference to religion, would exclude you from the kingdom of God. Nor would there be any thing arbitrary in this. A heart insensible to the claims of the gospel, and unmoved by the affecting scenes of Calvary, in such a world of ruin as this, surely is not meet for the inheritance of the saints. Were you, therefore, not to commit another sin, were you to remain stationary as to moral character, you must be lost. By all that is heart-rending in the idea of banishment from God, in the thought of lying down in everlasting sorrow, I would arouse you to reflection, and entreat you to lay these things to heart.

5. Another consideration is, no more powerful means will be employed to awaken you to the concerns of your soul. Consider what God has done to induce you to seek him. His words are full of emphasis, calculated to seal up every mouth, and sweep away every excuse : "What

could have been done to my vineyard that I have not done? How often would I have gathered you, and ye would not!" That you might know God, his works have been spread out before you; that you might early serve him, parents and teachers have instructed you from the first dawn of moral being; that you might be convinced of sin, the high and holy precepts of the law have been placed beside your conduct, that you might mark your deficiency; that you might escape the wrath of God, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world has been set forth as the propitiation for sin. Ministers have preached, Christian friends have entreated, and still you are careless about the most solemn subject in the universe. Are you waiting to be moved? There is enough now bearing upon you to excite half the heathen world. Ah! the poor heathen will rise up in the judgment, and condemn you.

O ye careless ones, what shall be done to disturb your deep slumbers? If one rising from the dead would not make those hear who had Moses and the prophets, what new thing, or solemn thing, shall be said to those who, in addition, have Christ and the apostles? There is every reason to fear you will still sleep on. The fact that you are on the slippery brink of ruin, on the sides of a volcano ready to burst forth, does not alarm you; the fact that God stoops to warn you, and that he will not send another gospel, or make another display of his love before you, excites no interest. We are ready to exclaim with the prophet, "O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night" over the stupidity of sinners.

6. This carelessness is increased by indulgence, and confirmed by habit. A long process of hardening the heart has gone on, before such a state of perfect apathy is reached. What saith the Scripture? Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil." A deceived heart turns the sinner aside, so that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? A state of indifference, induced by the habit of neglecting the gospel for

years, will not be easily broken up. Novelty, which is a powerful auxiliary to truth, is lost upon such. If the mighty works which Christ wrought in Chorazin and Bethsaida, had been done in Tyre and Sidon (heathen cities), they would have repented. And if the same truths which sinners hardened under the gospel reject, were delivered in the name of

Christ to many in the waste places of the earth, they would doubtless turn to the Lord.

This indifference of which God complains is voluntary. Go thy way, said Felix to Paul, when I have a convenient season I will call for thee. He made his seriousness yield to his convenience. Who will say he was under a necessity to dismiss the apostle? He says no such thing. He might have taken a different course; and so might you have done, careless reader; for you were not always as indifferent as you now are. When eternal things were pressed upon your regard, when the truth of God was felt, or a solemn providence filled you with seriousness, when you were agitating the question whether you should arise and go to your Father with the prodigal's confession, who will say that an iron necessity bound you to the fatal course you took? What but a perverse will led you to dismiss your fears, to abandon your closet, to prefer the world? Ah! you must know that you acted deliberately; you would not come to Christ that you might have life; and now if you die in your sins, if you are left to the sleep of spiritual and eternal death, it will be for ever true that God called, and you refused; that he knocked at your heart, and you would not open to him; that he stretched out his hand, and you would not regard him; that he sent his ministers to beseech you to be reconciled, and that you hated knowledge, and despised all his reproofs.

Another reason why you should be troubled is, this carelessness is a state of mind that provokes God to withdraw his Spirit. This indifference springs from deep depravity; it is deeply criminal. If the heart were not deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, men would not be so insensible to divine things. The truths of God possess sufficient interest to excite every sensibility, to awaken every power. Must it not offend the Author of this record, to say, that he has failed to reveal himself in a way to interest his creatures? They can be interested; a romance, a work of the imagination, can hold them waking till midnight, while the gospel is nodded over, or wholly neglected. Ah! the cause is not in the inspired record, but in the heart it is enmity against God. Men reject Christ, "because their deeds are evil :" and continuing to reject him, they are in danger of being given up to incorrigible hardness of heart. All habits gather strength by repetition. The man who sinned against his conscience the last Sabbath, will be more likely to sin against it to-day. He who

stifled conviction then, is probably more disposed to do it now. In this way God is provoked to leave him his Spirit will not always strive with men. The sinner first sinks into indifference before he sinks into judicial sleep. Oh, how many who were apparently not far from the kingdom of God relapse into stupidity, and never wake out of it! They have eyes, but they see not; their ears are dull of hearing; their hearts have waxed gross, so that they will not turn to the Lord. Wo unto you when God departs from you! This is no uncommon case. In ancient times God said, “ My people would not hearken to my voice; so I gave them up to their own hearts' lusts." If unbelief under the Old Testament dispensation thus provoked him, how must he regard those who reject his Son! Jesus Christ says, "Oh that they had known in this their day the things which belong to their peace! but now they are hid from their eyes. God spake to the heathen, says the apostle, so as to take away excuse even from them; but they refused to hear, and their punishment is thus described: "Because they liked not to retain God in their knowledge, he gave them over to a reprobate mind." What then will he do to those who turn away from Him who speaks from heaven!

Let me say, in conclusion, your indifference will ultimately be broken up, and will aggravate your condemnation a thousand fold. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men; and though the retribution sleep, it will come, and will not tarry. The measure of iniquity may be long filling up; but when it is full, the judgment will be inflicted.

Oh, to awake in despair, and find from the actual infliction of God's wrath what an evil thing it is to sin against him; to know by irreparable loss the value of blessings despised, of atoning blood trampled in the dust, of grace rejected! How will it embitter the soul to dwell upon scenes passed through during a probationary season! The light which now shines will add deeper shades to the darkness of the pit. Recollection will be an endless source of misery to the lost. Son," said Abraham to the man in torment, REMEMBER that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things." What words can express the anguish of a soul thus reminded of lost opportunities? "Oh! had it not been for my foolish pride, I might now be robed in purity at God's right hand: but I would not yield_to truth-I contended with God, and justly perish." Let these lamentations from the world of woe now rouse you to

throw off this lethargy that now settles upon you; call upon God-cast yourself at his feet-and from this hour act for eternity; for if you wrap yourself in the delusion that tomorrow shall be as this day, in such an hour as you think not the avenger of blood may be upon you. And will you run the desperate hazard of losing your soul through sinful procrastination? Delay,-and your "dreadful end" may only furnish another warning to such as "forget God." But there is still “ forgiveness with him, that he may be feared. Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, who will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." But remember that there is only one channel through which salvation and eternal life can be obtained. Every individual of the human race is guilty in the sight of God, both by nature and by practice; and unless he obtain salvation from some other source than by trusting to what he himself can do, he is resting on a foundation which will not stand the test of the great day of account. But God in his wondrous mercy and love to fallen man, has devised a scheme whereby he might be just, and the justifier of the sinner who believeth on Jesus. His own Son, Jesus Christ, came into the world, bore the curse of a broken law, and suffered in his own body on the accursed tree, the punishment which ought to have been inflicted on us. God has declared himself well pleased with what He has done; and that, whosoever believeth on him, hath everlasting life; for the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth from all sin. Go, then, to Him who is alone "the way, the truth, and the life;" cast yourself at the foot of his cross, as a guilty sinner, and assuredly you shall obtain forgiveness, and an inheritance among them that are sanctified. Delay not for a single day, nor a single hour, but remember that God himself hath said, "He that believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him."

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